PayPal buys mobile payments scanner Card.io

By
John Ribeiro
|
18 July 2012
|
IDG News Service

PayPal has acquired Card.io to take advantage of mobile phone cameras to scan credit cards.

"[The deal will help Paypal] create new experiences to make it even easier for consumers and merchants to use the PayPal digital wallet," said Hill Ferguson, vice president of global product at PayPal, in a blog post on Tuesday.

Employees at Card.io will be transferred to the PayPal global product team in San Jose.

PayPal is already using the technology from Card.io in PayPal Here, its mobile payment technology for small businesses and casual sellers that it unveiled in March.

The current Card.io technology will remain available to developers for use in their own applications, Ferguson added.

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Card.io also said on its website that its software development kits for Android and iOS will continue to be available to developers to use in their applications.

PayPal and parent eBay have been making acquisitions in the area of mobile payments. Ebay said in July last year that it had agreed to acquire Zong, a provider of payments through mobile carrier billing, for about US$240 million.

Card.io like the Zong team will benefit from the opportunity to work on projects that will accelerate innovation at a scale that is not possible at a startup, Ferguson said.

The Card.io technology made its debut in June last year. "You just hold a credit card up to the phone, and card.io automatically reads the card information using the phone's camera," the company's CEO and co-founder Mike Mettler said in a blog post at the time.

We have been hearing for years how CIOs and senior IT professionals need to bury the hatchet with line of business managers and, instead of focusing on the latest bleeding-edge technology for its own sake, seek to better understand the overall strategic objectives of their organisations.